Would need to be outside of region and wings to select also otherwise the party line towers would be selected.
I think all/most of the gripes above could be fixed with better context when communicating.
I.e. alcohol ban was communicated as its just banned. Rather than having the why behind it, which when i found it out , brought me into agreement to the ban
Perhaps randomised blind ballot - put all our service numbers into a pot & see who’s selected?
Like jury duty but for RAFAC CFAVs
Perhaps have a red team & a blue team that are independent of each other to see what solutions or ideas that can be come up with then critically assess each others.
Command need to find away to avoid garbage data in that results in garbage out that’s just causing things to stagnate.
Agree it would need to be some sort of way so that you get the full selection not just the party liners, encourage those who don’t go because they don’t feel they’ll be heard etc.
This could work really well, as it would start to identify what are actually common themes and what are just gripes of the loudest ones. And the spark of an idea on one but the group couldn’t expand on it might open up a thought path on another
Don’t get too excited. Senior engagement on here will be fleeting at best. No real change will be forthcoming, and it’ll be forgotten about as quickly as it was thought to be a good idea to engage.
“Make the most of it!” I hear you cry, sorry, seen them all come and go; they just get worse. No evidence of any kind of positive change or fix for years.
Peps assessment is accurate and damning. Mike has tried to engage at top level and has been pushed back. This organisation will never learn.
Why am I here? You ask, I often ask myself the same thing. But just every now and then as a WSO, between the politics and nonesense, I get on a sqn, engage with cadets and actually enjoy myself.
Never anything to do with our structure, the embarrassment of the CoC, or the latest rubbish HQAC spews - but always engaging with the cadets is what makes it worthwhile.
@Cab get out your uniform, turn up at a sqn in jeans and t-shirt. Talk to cadets and staff as an unknown, realise the issues and help us. Please!
To be honest this is what I would expect. Yes come on here drain the swamp challenge the pre conceptions but at the end of the day the paid staff are there to be enablers & put the infrastructure in place so we volunteers can deliver.
Once the ship has stopped heeling violently from side to side then I would expect paid staff to sit back a little in here & lurk in the background whilst we chunter, quietly nudging things here & there every now & then.
Polo top & chinos please - we do have some standards to maintain 
Any is better than none, and everyone has the right to defend themselves and their teams.
If no one with alternative perspectives or experiences ever came in, or if they were not accepted and welcomed (albeit they may be rightly challenged and debated) then we may as well be a private Subreddit echo chamber.
The forum is here to enable discussion, debate, and the sharing of knowledge and experience. We may be cynical, but that doesn’t mean we’re closed off to new (tangible) evidence and well structured logic that may generate dissonance between what we thought we knew or believed.
Correct. So let’s see some then.
Reading some of the garbled comm, it is not just about assurance,its about the melodramatic effect of needing rhq to sweep up the mess should, in extreme circumstances, something goes wrong, appears we have enough broom but not enough operators.
Why don’t we just close this outdated organisation - we have lost most of the RAF links and the original reason for our existanceso let’s just cut our losses and be badged as AAC within the ACF !!
Nothing fleeting about my commitment to the Air Cadets and neither do I need to anonymously engage with those involved. I have always sought open and honest engagement and that is exactly what I get when I travel the UK and see what our fantastic organisation is achieving. I welcome frankness but this must come with recognition that emotion must not result in a lack of politeness and mutual respect. Nobody in RAFAC comes to work or comes to volunteer aiming to do a bad job. I see an organisation full of brilliant people doing their utmost under very difficult circumstances. Nothing I have seen in here is an unknown but neither are all the issues resolvable easily or quickly.
No lack of connection, in fact the exact opposite. We have more graduates than ever in our Cranwell and Halton parade squares who herald from the Air Cadets. Flying opportunities are, at last, increasing now we have done the hard work to resolve gliding airworthiness and addressed Tutor issues. New VGS have opened and synthetic training devices are proliferating. The digitalisation of RAFAC continues at pace with some aspects leading the parent Service. Education continues to modernise and we are seeking to more easily recognise this education in our recruitment. Of course there are resource challenges but this is not a failing organisation. Far from it.
More to do with the RAF being smaller than ever than it is necessarily because of the ‘product’ coming out of RAFAC, though.
The ongoing Air Traffic control issues at RAF Wittering still mean that 5AEF has done no AEF flying at weekends since they moved from Cambridge.
More VGS - only because a decent aircraft was taken out of service and Vigilant VGSs all closed.
Synthetic training - lets be honest, Flight Sims… a lot of cadets already have these at home… maybe better than those on Squadrons. Our Sqn CO is an airline captain, yet is not deemed to be capable of teaching a 12 year old to fly a circuit on a simulator.
Education… all classification exams are now ‘open book’ (read ‘Google’) and the BTEC is now worth only 1x GCSE wheras it used to be considered equal to 4 and not involving and further work by the cadets.
OK, so we give the RAF recruits whomight know the ranks, can iron their uniform and polish their shoes after 4 years… non-cadet recruits catch them up in week 2 of Basic training.
Just how much value are we adding ??
Open book to their notes (hence the Leading Notebooks, and the Senior ones starting to come out) and it’s down to the Sqns to manage. For us we don’t allow academics (studying or exams) at home, studying we may allow in exceptional circumstances but it’s a Sqn thing to do and it makes sure we prevent them rushing through the classification, and actually learning it not just doing it to pass the exam
Your statement is true either, numbers coming out of rafac is nothing to do with size of raf
I agree, but it so needed to be said !!
All of life is open book.
Software developers, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, engineers, architects, etc are all using search engines, forums, manuals, guides, and information repositories.
I spend a not insignificant amount of time on the Autodesk forums working out solutions for work. Learning how to find answers is more important than learning how to cram information for an exam.
I literally follow technical publications and APs to the letter for procedures.
Anything else I resort to industry documents for specifications etc.
Never not open book.
Yep. This is one of the few positive changes that have happened in the last 10 years.